"Everyone desires relationships and community. Most people want to belong to a cohesive, like-minded group. It staves off loneliness. It promotes identity. These are natural and very human instincts." -Joshua Ferris
Different social media platforms connect people to family, friends, virtual connections, and groups. As mainstream media and journalism have consolidated, eroded, and prioritized profit over the pursuit of truth, people look for news and information on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Per a recent Pew Research report, close to 70% of U.S.-based Twitter users consumed news from their Twitter feed.[1]
Meta (formerly Facebook and which includes Instagram and WhatsApp) started as “FaceMash”. Mark Zuckerberg wrote about FaceMash as follows[2]:
I'm a little intoxicated, not gonna lie. So what if it's not even 10 p.m. and it's a Tuesday night? What? The Kirkland [dorm] facebook is open on my desktop and some of these people have pretty horrendous facebook pics. I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive.
— 9:48 pm
Yea, it's on. I'm not exactly sure how the farm animals are going to fit into this whole thing (you can't really ever be sure with farm animals ...), but I like the idea of comparing two people together.
— 11:09 pm
[1] Mitchell, Shearer, Stocking, 2021, Pew Research Center https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2021/11/15/news-on-twitter-consumed-by-most-users-and-trusted-by-many/
[2] Hoffman, 2010, Rolling Stone, https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/the-battle-for-facebook-242989/
Billionaire narcissist Elon Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022. In May 2022, 23% of U.S. adults surveyed use Twitter (71% stated they use Facebook). Just as mainstream media consolidated (in the 1980s 50 companies owned the majority of print and broadcast media, in 2022, six corporations controlled 90% of the media), social media is now controlled by a few billionaires and investors.
Advertisers leverage user data (such as user profile information, location, likes, posts, and comments) to produce advanced, high-value methods to target advertising toward users. Meta, Twitter (and other platforms such as TikTok) generate massive advertising revenue by distributing targeted content and advertising to users.[3]
[3] McFarlane, 2022, Investopedia, https://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/032114/how-facebook-twitter-social-media-make-money-you-twtr-lnkd-fb-goog.aspx
Therefore, commercial platforms have significant economic incentives to create controversy, sell user data analyzed for psychometric profiling, and distribute propaganda and misinformation. State actors understand the reach of social platforms and use them to attack political opponents, manipulate voters, and entrench belief systems not based on facts, evidence, or science. Recent examples, such as the role of Facebook and Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 U.S. elections and Brexit[4] and Putin’s Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) that used Twitter to engage 1.4 million Twitter users[5].
[4] Cadwalladr, Harrison 2018, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/17/facebook-cambridge-analytica-kogan-data-algorithm
[5] Polyakova, 2019, Lawfare Institute/Brookings, https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-mueller-report-tells-us-about-russian-influence-operations
Data Privacy
While most people understand the horrors that can stem from having personally identifiable information (PII) lead to identity theft, fraudulent credit card charges, or even having your checking and/or savings account stolen by criminal actors, many in the United States do not value or consider privacy with regard to social media. While we want to connect to others and belong to online communities, some relatively innocent posts can lead to direct crime. For example, posting photographs while traveling or vacationing is common. Yet people connected indirectly with your social account (for example, a connection of a friend) might be able to obtain your physical address and know you are away from home. Furthermore, while you might take special care to protect your privacy, a connected friend might be “wide-open,” providing a doorway into your sensitive data or the sensitive data of a friend.
The Product is You
If you go to a nearby store to purchase a television, it’s clear that the television is the product. You pay for the product and take it home with you. As there is generally no payment to use a social platform such as Meta (including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp), Twitter, or TikTok, how do those companies provide the computers, programmers, and storage necessary for you to use their platforms? They rely on advertising. For example, you post a status saying, “…my water heater broke, now my basement is flooded, guess I know how I’m spending my weekend…” and suddenly you are getting ads from Lowe’s and Home Depot for new water heaters. Not a big deal, right? However, not all ads are created equal. Political advertisers using your data from social media can gain a very personal understanding of what type of ad is going to appeal to you, what kind of ad or content you are likely to share among your connections, and other highly personal ways of targeting you to potentially manipulate how you vote -or even encourage you to not vote at all. Such mechanisms were leveraged by campaigns using Cambridge Analytica data harvesting via Facebook to affect the outcome of the 2016 U.S. elections, as well as impacting the Brexit vote in the U.K.[6]. Data was harvested for 214 million Americans and has been used by political campaigns in support of the Trump candidacy, as well as by state actors such as Putin/Russia.
[6] Rosenberg, Dance 2018, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/08/us/facebook-users-data-harvested-cambridge-analytica.html
Controversy + Conflict = Profit
At its peak “The Jerry Springer Show” had close to 10 million viewers. According to the Pew Research Center, PBS NewsHour has about 1.1 million viewers. In news reporting, the quote “If it bleeds it leads” is a mantra implying that if you want people to consume your reporting, prioritize conflict and violence over diplomacy and collaboration. There is a direct correlation between the number of viewers, listeners, readers, and/or users and the resultant advertising revenue. When exposed to a steady stream of violence, hate, blame, and conflict (especially true these days of populist elected officials), a role model is established for all members of a society such that hate, exclusion, and othering of groups of people is not only acceptable, but preferred over inclusion, empathy, compassion, and reason. As conventional media (broadcast television and radio, newspaper and print), and social media are beholden to ownership (i.e. Meta/Zuckerberg, Twitter/Musk, Fox/Murdoch) and investors, there are strong economic incentives to produce revenue, profit, and a growing return on investment, even when such objectives have an egregious impact upon fundamental societal values.
The Monopoly Game
Recent calls have been made to break up massive social platforms as they have consolidated over the years[7]. For example, Meta (then Facebook) acquired Instagram and WhatsApp to create a behemoth with social posts (Facebook), social photography (Instagram), and messaging (WhatsApp). A better method to address monopolistic growth is to call for industry standards for data portability and privacy. People who worry about Meta’s pattern of privacy breaches (and their earlier relationship with political bad actors such as Cambridge Analytica (now Emerdata), often leave the platform temporarily for something new and yet are unable to break away from Meta because of the inability to easily reconnect with their friends and communities on a competing platform. Platforms such as Ello, MeWe, Post.News, Mastodon, and others emerge, promise varied aspects of privacy, initially gain a significant subscriber base due to pent-up subscriber frustration and concern with massive platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, and then recede and erode until marginalized[8].
[7] Bond, Selyukh, Allyn 2020, NPR, https://www.npr.org/2020/10/06/920882893/how-are-apple-amazon-facebook-google-monopolies-house-report-counts-the-ways
[8] Nicholas, 2023, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2023/jan/08/elon-musk-drove-more-than-a-million-people-to-mastodon-but-many-arent-sticking-around
A Not-so-simple Proposal: Social Media for Societal Good
Based upon experiences and insights gained over the last several years, the following are the “ingredients” and “recipe” to grow and sustain a social platform intended to facilitate social connections and collaboration for societal goodness. We continue evolving and developing the https://social.civ.works platform to embody all of the below.
Multistakeholder Ownership
For social media platforms, there is a fundamental clash between the interests of extreme wealth and the interests of equity, justice, and democracy. This conflict can be addressed through a multistakeholder model of ownership where investors, executives, employees, contractors, journalists/news sources, educators, content creators, positive influencers, and platform subscribers have a balanced interest in societal good while achieving economic viability, profitability, and growth. Furthermore, the integrity of the concept should be protected via a “Perpetual Purpose Trust”. Such a Trust would provide a legal mechanism to defend against attempts to subvert the media platform.
Account Protection
Subscriber profile information, comments, posts, friends, and other interactions should be private, protected, and the level of access should be controlled by the subscriber[9].
Account Portability
The optimal mechanism for Congress to create social media competition and address monopolistic concerns is establishing account portability standards. Therefore, a subscriber/user of any platform could receive their ‘bulk’ data (profile, posts, friends, blocked users, photos, etc.) and be able to upload their data to a different platform. While numerous social media platforms have failed, the most significant barrier is the intensive effort necessary to painstakingly re-establish connections with friends, family, and others on any emerging platform. True account portability as a mechanism to easily propagate individual and/or group social connection and networking data to other platforms would promote competition between social media platforms -thus using market-based leverage to cause platforms to create real value for subscribers and to properly protect subscriber data and privacy.
Advertising Free/Subscription-only Model
Meta, Twitter, and others are dependent upon advertising revenue and the ability to target advertising to a very-specific user demographic. It has been said that Facebook is not a product -the user (unknowingly) is the product when considering the totality of a user’s posts, likes, comments, connections, groups, and other interactions. In the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, it was said, “Give me a few dozen likes, and I’ll tell you who the user will be voting for -the psychometric characterization of a user.”
[9] Cadwalladr, Graham-Harrison, 2018, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/17/facebook-cambridge-analytica-kogan-data-algorithm
Free from Hate, Violence, Bullying, Bots, and Trolls
Taking additional steps to validate subscribers (and elevating accounts that are validated) will provide greater protection from bad actors, bots, and trolls. An emerging platform should provide mechanisms for people to participate freely but also provide elevated virtual areas for validated subscribers to, for example, interact with their elected officials in townhalls, polling, and participatory budgeting, engage in serious discussions about policy, and other important factors related to the quality of life.
Account Elevation: Validated Constituents, Outcome-based Conversations Leading to Action
A platform should provide an intuitive and secure mechanism for people to register and establish their social account while ensuring the account owner is not a troll or bot and agrees to comply with hate-free, bullying-free terms of service. Any platform for societal good should not present an economic barrier to use. Over the lifecycle of an account, algorithmic testing can help to verify and elevate accounts to a “trusted” status. For example, someone who self-declares politically progressive yet provides posts and links supportive of “trickle-down free market” economics would diminish an internal trust score. Disrespectful comments or behaviors would also diminish the internal trust score and should result in warnings about potential account suspension and/or termination due to violation of terms of service. A higher trusted score over time could elevate subscriber status and facilitate participation in conversations in more exclusive areas of the platform intended for collaboration and participation in political, economic, policy, and governance, such as participatory democracy and budgeting. Paid subscribers and/or subscribers with validated accounts should have a visual indicator of their trust/validation status. Subscribers who have validated their account with a physical location with a non-negative trust score could participate in direct virtual town hall meetings with their elected officials.
The Subscriber/User Experience
The subscriber/user experience for web, mobile, or augmented/virtual reality should be secure, visually compelling, simple, intuitive, and fun. A subscriber should be able to participate in public groups readily, request participation in private/advertised groups, and request connections with other subscribers (provided the subscriber is in good standing). Subscribers should own their content, such as likes, connections, posted links, status updates, and photos. While such content can be used to determine an internal “trust” score, no individual content should be sold, leased, or shared with any third party to the platform unless directed by the subscriber. While the platform will provide a default ‘feed’ experience, the subscriber can control the weightings of content they view, giving them control over their priorities, whether content from connections, news sources, categories, photographs, or recently popular content. Placed within the feeds will be geo-targeted effective civic action opportunities within the subscriber's self-declared issue affinity lists (either virtual or physical) for which the subscriber can engage (see more about actions below).
Groups and Organizations
The platform must provide mechanisms for (hate-free) groups and organizations. Group functionality should facilitate parent/child organizational pages -ie. -a national organization and state/regional sub-pages. The group pages should be administered by those delegated/assigned by the group page owner, and the group pages should have the flexibility to be segmented/organized by the group admin. The owner of the group page(s) should also be able to provision data accessibility and analytics -specifically within the scope of the pages they own/administer -and such accessibility must be visible to all users who connect/subscribe/interact within the scope of the group.
Actions: Political, Economic, Educational
While the primary purpose of a thriving social media platform is to provide virtual connections between friends, family, associates, and organizations, the public purpose of a proposed platform is to promote equity, justice, democracy, and education, through collaboration and civic engagement. Just as advertising flows through conventional platforms, we are working to distribute meaningful and effective civic actions to subscribers based on their geo-location, issue affinity, and their style of engagement. Such actions can be virtual, physical, political, economic, and/or educational. For example, an action to boycott certain products, services, or companies (due to egregious/harmful behavior) would be an economic action. Watching a three-minute film from a subject matter expert such as Robert Reich on the risks of extreme wealth inequality or viewing a short film about gerrymandering from the Brennan Center for Justice would be considered an educational action. Performing such actions enhances a subscriber’s ability to engage in meaningful policy discussions and governance decisions with community leaders and/or elected officials. The scope of actions can be global, national, State, or local actions. Groups can publish and track their own actions (provided such actions do not violate the platform's terms of service -ie.- actions intended to spread hate, bullying, or othering of people). Groups can also propose actions to be published sitewide.
Gamification of Actions
Providing feedback to subscribers based upon their interactions on the platform reinforces participation which increases the platform's value over time. Internal algorithms that weight interactions can nurture more important use of the platform intended for collaborative participation in democracy, governance, and budgeting at the local, State, National, or even global level. A subscriber dashboard (available for individual and group subscribers) should be visually compelling and provide current and trending information and feedback for the subscriber, with a scoring emphasis on heavier-weight/higher-value interactions they have had with the platform.
Civic Education
Short-form media can be used in the design and creation of locally-focused civic education based upon local laws, local governing bodies, and how to be effective in influencing good governance and policy. Completing a course or a logical set of courses could elevate a subscriber account to participate in policy discussions, policy decisions, virtual polling, and dialogue with elected representatives.
About civ.works
Founded in 2018, Civic Works is a 501c3 non-profit organization (see https://civ.works). The objective of Civic Works is to develop and build technology intended to strengthen democracy through subscriber education, trusted information, and civic engagement. The first product of Civic Works is the social platform “civ.works” -https://social.civ.works. Civic Works Corporation is a public benefit corporation, established in 2022 to operate the civ.works platform and provide multistakeholder equity for subscribers, investors, and development partners.
We have History Books,
we have Records files
for you:
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/steve-bannon-and-members-of-trumps-inner-circle-stash-investments-in-offshore-tax-havens/
Read On.